This is one of a number of popular, but unsubstantiated, myths regarding CLIMACTIC temperature variations.

The consensus exists, whether some wish to recognize it, or not.

We all think we have reasonable evidence for our positions, that others won't accept, even as we deny the presence of reasonable evidence for others' positions. Instead of just focusing on our own predicament, however, we should stop to look at the situation others are facing.

Specifically, we should look more closely at the flaws we have identified in others' arguments and think about what sorts of arguments and evidence would force us to take their claims more seriously. When we are doing this, we are not being biased in favor of our own pet theories — we are being as critical as we can, perhaps even too critical. This, then, is what we should try to turn back around against our pet theories. We should demand the same standards from ourselves, that we require of others.

So, what is reasonable evidence for our position? It's evidence that we would accept for a position we don't already believe and perhaps are even a bit hostile towards — if we can't muster that much evidence on behalf of our claims, then we don't have enough yet.

This doesn't mean our claims are wrong, or even that the evidence we have thus far is not fair, but if we want to convince others we should have enough that would convince ourselves if we were them.

Only fair to point out that before I started to look into climate science, and all I was going on was what I would read in the papers, I too was a skeptic. It wasn't until I started to read the journals and also note where all the contrarian arguments were actually coming from, that I became convinced. Some people (most?) will simply pick a 'team' and stick with it, come hell or high water (so to speak). I have no time for those types, once I recognize who they are.

What is the worst that can happen if we continue using fossil fuel? Nothing different than if we reduced in accordance with the most strict global warming proposal. Other developing countries will burn every gallon of oil that we don't. Every one and more. The affect that you can have on the matter is insignificant. China and India aren't going to care about your Kyoto protocol or any other global treaty on such matters. Not one care. They will grow and prosper and build their militaries while we sacrifice and struggle. Count me out.

JZK, you are very wise.
Second time I agreed with you in the past couple days.
Liberals will never agree. No use arguing with them.
Obama will solve all are problems soon.

... What is the worst that can happen if we continue using fossil fuel? ...

Let’s go with your delusion that global warming is false, that 10's of thousands of scientists are lying.
If global warming is a big scam or conspiracy, and we decide to not do anything about it, then life continues as normal and everyone is happy. If, on the other hand, we do something to mitigate human emissions, then the worst possible (but, nonetheless unlikely) scenario is a global economic depression.

Now, let’s go with the case that global warming is true.
Again, we have two options. If we do something about it, then we mitigate the warming and lessen the effects it will have. If, on the other hand, we don’t do anything about it then we have global disaster (famine, death, economic depression, etc).

Now lets look at the risks presented to the world in both scenarios. The two risk in the first scenario is that we will have a global economic depression.

The risk in the second scenario is that we will have global disaster (including global economic depression).

The tools of risk management tells us that to make the best choice, we must choose the option that presents us with the smaller risk.

To mitigate the potential risks that global climate change poses to the world, since it is at least possible that there are risks on both sides of the argument, it only makes sense to mitigate climate change.

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Gord May "If you didn't have the time or money to do it right in the first place, when will you get the time/$ to fix it?"

I was worried for a while and researched (am i allowed to say that of myself?) a lot.

The big lie is that we are somehow responsible for climate change.

Pollution - yes.

Occasionally we boat up the Chicago river to the Chicago sanitary canal to the Illinois/Indiana border. For some parts of the river, there are signs saying "no personal watercraft - water not fit for human contact" or something to that effect. How about we clean up whatever makes the water unfit for human contact, rather than pretending that CO2 is a pollutant.

To mitigate the potential risks that global climate change poses to the world, since it is at least possible that there are risks on both sides of the argument, it only makes sense to mitigate climate change.

How is that even possible? The only thing harder to believe than we are causing climate change is that we can stop climate change.

So far no one here has posted a satisfactory answer as to how you get India and China to reduce their CO2 emissions. If we don't buy the Cheap Chinese stuff, someone else will. That is how the market works. Push against it, and it pushes back even harder.

What if there were a way to mitigage our CO2 production by dropping Iron into the Ocean to stimulate plankton growth and CO2 absorbtion? Would you be cool with humans emitting as much CO2 as they wanted as long as it were offset?

Assume that the Iron thing wouldn't hurt the environment in any other way.

The Discovery Channel has started a series that will detail eight or nine different ideas that when and if implemented, will suppsedly save the Earth from global warming. Now, we all know everyone's opinions on GW, so let's set that somewhat aside and focus on the show, if we can.
There were two hours of this last night. The first hour was an overview of all the ideas/inventions that the series will show. The second hour was about one of the ideas. There were things from robotic ships that will produce "extra" cloud cover anywhere in the world to releasing billions of tiny lenses in outer space to orbit the Earth and reflect some of the sun's energy to covering ALL of the world's glaciers with a reflective blanket to cut down the melting of the galciers. The list goes on and I'm sure if you would go to the Disovery.com website, you could see all the ideas and watch the first two shows.
O.K. Apparently, the collective opinion at Discovery is that GW exists and is a present danger. But, what exactly are they up to? I agree that our use of carbon-based energy needs to be seriously taken into consideration and steps need to be taken to cut back on it's use, but if you here this show, we're all going to die and sometime by the year of 2050. Where did that date come from? Seriously, where? The verbage the narrarator used was completely based in scare tactics, the footage they used to show what would happen if the glaciers were to melt showed events that happen when areas are subject to a lot of rainfall and quickly flood, not what it would be if the galciers melt and slowly flood low-lying areas. All the scientists that were interviewed said some pretty incredible/hard-to-swallow stuff. And, IMHO, none of the ideas/inventions that this series will show are no where near financially, logistically, or scientifically viable and I really don't see how anyone with any brains that watches the show could think otherwise. Does the Discovery Channel know this and is just using this to scare us? Or, are they just trying to get us to start thinking? I like the Discovery Channel, but if they're going to start showing programs like this, I don't know!
The second hour of the show was about this nobel prize winning glaciologist that wants to cover ALL of the galciers in the world with some sort of reflective blanket so the galciers will slow down in their melting. They tried to find a material that would stand up to the punishing weather of the arctic environment by using a big fan and fed ice cubes into the wind stream by dropping the ice cubes off the end of a conveyor belt. The first material used was a sheet made from hemp. It was torn up, so they found a plastic material that would work. They finally got all the stuff they would need packed onto this glacier and started putting the blankets down. They used bamboo stakes to hold the blankets in place because, as the engineer lady was so pleased to announce, the bamboo wouldn't hurt the environment. What about a 2 acre piece of plastic pinned to the galcier? Last I checked, plastic products weren't too good on the environment. Plus, no matter what material you used for the blankets, wouldn't you have to continually cover the galciers? Glaciers are formed form snowfall that's accumulated over time, packed together and then the pressure forms the ice. One blanket ain't gonna do the trick. You'll just have to watch the show.

What if there were a way to mitigage our CO2 production by dropping Iron into the Ocean to stimulate plankton growth and CO2 absorbtion? Would you be cool with humans emitting as much CO2 as they wanted as long as it were offset?

Assume that the Iron thing wouldn't hurt the environment in any other way.

And that's a BIG assumption. One possible result would be that resultant plankton growth would cause a boom in krill and other species which feed on plankton. Over-population there could lead to a boom-bust cycle, with the end result being large dead zones in the area in the ocean areas seeded with iron.

The best bet - based on my own limited amount of personal research in the area of global warming - is to address the problem slowly via carbon credits, but also to learn from past mistakes.

The downsides to carbon trading are the complexity of the schemes, the likelihood of clever traders being able to "game" the markets (c.f., Enron), and the perverse effect of carbon markets making it smart to be a hold-out -- if most others in the market are operating below the cap and trying to sell remaining credits, the price per unit will drop sufficiently that even the most egregious emitter can afford to operate unchanged

Seems the author correctly predicted what happened in the carbon markets last year - the market collapsed. The irony of this is that one could conceivably argue that the carbon credit market collapse helped fuel this past year's oilprice hikes - some of the investors in oil futures inevitably were fleeing the carbon credit markets.

Not that I believe that was a significant cause - just that someone could (and probably has) argue that point.

As someone earlier pointed out, as long as the majority of people in this country who believe in Creationism, ID, or astrology, the boogie man, or elves - we're going to have a hard time dealing with any problems which require hard science, because hard science doesn't have the "street cred" that voodoo economics/politics/sham-science does... Just listen to Jay Leno with his "man in the street" interviews for The Late Show.

What if there were a way to mitigage our CO2 production by dropping Iron into the Ocean to stimulate plankton growth and CO2 absorbtion? Would you be cool with humans emitting as much CO2 as they wanted as long as it were offset?
Assume that the Iron thing wouldn't hurt the environment in any other way.

You're asking us to take a rather large leap of faith, because as with any action in the natural environment, it is impossible to foresee all potential effects of Ocean Iron Fertilization, and thus it is conceivable that unexpected consequences can arise.

Notwithstandin, NO serious proponent of Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) experimentation, has suggested that OIF could substitute for emissions reduction. Even if after many years, OIF was scaled up to take place in all of the regions for which it would be effective, ocean fertilization could at best result in a fraction of the total CO2 reductions necessary to prevent dangerous climate change.
There is no simple technological solution that will allow us to continue to emit carbon dioxide at its present rate without severe consequences.

However, every potential mitigation technology (including OIF) needs to be explored in parallel.

Yes, I'd accept CO2 sequestration in the ocean, as an experimental first aid measure, but as any trauma physician would suggest, having administered plasma/blood transfusion, I'd still want to locate & stop the bleeding.

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Gord May "If you didn't have the time or money to do it right in the first place, when will you get the time/$ to fix it?"

I tend to agree that it is hard to imagine a decent consensus to mitigate the problem considering the lack of people who are prepared to look at the science behind the models. When you consider the number of people who still assert that the world was made in 7 days and has only been around for 4600 years it does become demoralising as I have become quite fond of the ecosystems I have studied. I suggest you take your children and grandchildren to have a look at some coralreefs now because in their life time they will largely be gone because of the other aspect of extra CO2 , ocean acidification

You're asking us to take a rather large leap of faith,....Yes, I'd accept CO2 sequestration in the ocean, as an experimental first aid measure, but as any trauma physician would suggest, having administered plasma/blood transfusion, I'd still want to locate & stop the bleeding.

I am not asking you to actually dump Iron into the Ocean, I was just asking whether you would support a hypothetical situation where we could reduce CO2 in the atmosphere without reducing our CO2 emissions. In asking the question, I am making the assumption that there really is Global Warming, which there isn't. However, I think that using hypotheticals one can really parse out a position and understand it better, especially the motives behind it.

If we really could find a way to suck up the excess CO2 harmlessly, there would be no "trauma" to the Planet and the Global Warming problem would cease to exist. However, many Global Warming advocates wouldn't be satisfied because solving Global Warming isn't their true motive. Their true motive is fighting capitalism and slowing technological progress.

It all goes back to the liberal vs. conservative debate. Capitalism vs. Socialism. Freedom vs. Equity. Capitalism equals freedom. However, freedom doesn't result in equality because people are not equal. Let them transact freely, and some will end up with more than others. However, those transactions will generally mean that even the lowest on the totem pole end up with way more than any other system. The poor in the US have cell phones, Xboxes and DVD players. Not so bad.

If you want equity, you have to take away freedom and force it through government control.

Global Warming is a perfect isssue for such socialists because it manufactures the biggest problem in the history in the world and blames it on capitalism. And, the "solution" to the problem is massive government control almost on a world government level - a socialists dream.

Now, Gord, don't get me wrong. I am not calling you a socialist as you did present a reasonable answer to the question. However, you still eluded to the idea that our conduct is the "problem" (truama) regardless of wether or not it has any effect on the environment (presuming the solution is working). Furthermore, I am using the labels "liberal," "conservative," "capitalist," and "socialist," not as some kind of ad hominem attacks but rather to try to logically describe the motivations behind each position.